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A new randomized trial from North Carolina suggests that digital tools like mPATH may slightly boost participation in CT lung cancer screening—yet the overall uptake remains strikingly low. Despite proven survival benefits and minimal risks, only a small fraction of eligible smokers proceed with screening, revealing deep systemic and informational barriers. Understanding why participation is so limited is essential to improving outcomes for one of the deadliest yet most survivable cancers when detected early.

America’s overdose crisis isn’t the simple story we’ve been told for years. A new investigation reveals how two key graphs — one famous, one ignored — shift entirely the way we understand what happened, why deaths keep rising, and why current policies continue to fail. This op-ed explains why the familiar “four-phase opioid epidemic” narrative collapses under scrutiny.

Scientific guidance isn’t carved in stone—it shifts as new evidence reshapes old assumptions. The recent reversal of long-standing hormone therapy warnings highlights how politics, public trust, and evolving data collide and why “follow the science” is far more complicated—and more vital—than the slogan suggests.

November 19th is National Bidet Day. Why? Who knows. But let's not waste an opportunity to make fun of it. Dust off that disco suit.

Taking Ozempic or Wegovy? Yale researchers just dropped a bombshell: two glasses of wine now hit like four, your BAC climbs higher and stays there longer, and you might not even feel it coming. And here’s the wild part: doctors say this same effect could accidentally be the most powerful tool we’ve ever had against alcohol addiction.

Doctors were once considered Gods, or at least godlike. Lawyers and now philosophers have long tried to grab a similar status -- by birthing artificial people. In the beginning, lawyers created corporate “persons.” And now they’re about to midwife their latest miracle: the AI-person. If you think a ChatBot with rights, duties, and the capacity to be sued (or sue you) sounds absurd, just wait until it asks for counsel.

Celebrities have discovered the ultimate performance enhancer: supplements that boost their bank accounts more than your health. With a dash of glamour and a sprinkle of pseudoscience, they promise you can buy your way to Beckham-level vitality—one overpriced scoop at a time. Spoiler: the glow is mostly marketing.

Can you benefit from light therapy? It depends. Treatments range from nonsensical to possibly useful to those proven to be effective.

"You have cancer." It's a life-changing (and sometimes life-ending) development—a horrible piece of news no one is really ever prepared to receive. Are there better and worse ways to react? Can you do anything to improve your prognosis? Dr. Chuck Dinerstein answers these questions while recounting his harrowing experience with prostate cancer.

The new Lancet Series on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) draws on decades of global data, mechanistic evidence, and more than 100 prospective studies to argue that UPFs constitute a dietary pattern actively displacing traditional food cultures and driving chronic disease worldwide. Yet the UPF/NOVA framework is itself contested, a point worth keeping in mind as the article advances its arguments.

Social media is awash in testimonials from anonymous men who claim that testosterone-replacement therapy (TRT) helped them beat depression, sexual dysfunction, obesity and other maladies that often impact men as they age. Such compelling endorsements no doubt appeal to others who struggle with these critical health issues, but do they stand up to scientific scrutiny? Let's take a closer look.

Across four very different stories runs a common thread: our deepening struggle to preserve authentic human connection in a world being reshaped by age, loss, and advancing technology. Together, they ask whether connection can be digitized, whether memory can be simulated, and whether creativity can survive automation, reminding us that the most meaningful bonds are still forged in the living, breathing presence of real people.

Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate and president of Rockefeller University, is well known in biology circles.  Not so his wife, Dr. Esther Lederberg – whose name was drowned in the annals of the history of biology. And yet her work is critical to the practice of cutting-edge medicine and serves as a scaffold for modern genetic discoveries.

A sweeping new analysis of more than 4,000 brain scans reveals that our brains’ neural networks don’t simply mature and then decline; they reorganize through a series of distinct life-stage “epochs,” each with its own opportunities and vulnerabilities. These structural shifts help explain why our abilities, behaviors, and risks for specific neurological conditions change so markedly across the lifespan.

We wait, eyes open, knowing Chat-AI is on the loose and a new wave of cataclysm is coming: more abused kids, more empty chairs at dinner tables, more emergency holds in psych wards. If regulators aren’t stepping in and courts are hamstrung, the Bots may be on the verge of takeover – the last hope may be lawyers who can outwit them. How sad.

House on fire? No worry. Sabre-toothed tiger chasing you? Big deal. Major surgery scheduled? Yawn. Fortunately for mankind (or at least most of us), there’s a sedative called Versed — and it relaxes you so thoroughly that… who cares?

While dogs have long been celebrated for easing stress and boosting companionship, science is beginning to explore a more unexpected influence: the microbes they share with us. A new study suggests that some of the mental-health benefits seen in teens who grow up with dogs might be carried not by wagging tails, but microscopic hitchhikers.

This essay examines how recent political intervention has reshaped the CDC’s public messaging on vaccines and autism. In Part 1, I explain why the scientific evidence on this topic has not changed—and why the CDC’s newly revised webpage represents a step backward for public health communication. Part 2 will explore how growing political influence has eroded trust in the agency over time.

It’s neither hot, sunny, nor anywhere near National Egg Cream Day. Could there be a better reason to write about it?

If you're a parent of young children, chances are the Elf on the Shelf comes to your home during the holiday season. You give it a name, prop it on a shelf, and instantly you have Santa’s personal surveillance drone watching your family's every move. But how exactly does the little tyrant do it-- watch our every move and report back to Santa, that is? We'll help you explain the fun, light-hearted science to your curious kids.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' move away from recommending routine hepatitis B vaccination at birth is being treated as either a triumph of “medical freedom” or a looming public-health disaster. Strip away the heat, and the situation is simpler: hepatitis B is still dangerous, the newborn vaccine is still remarkably safe, and the real-world care system is imperfect. The question isn’t whether parents can choose—they always could—it’s whether policy should keep nudging toward the choice that prevents the most avoidable infections.

The search for answers in autism is deeply emotional, and unscrupulous actors know it. Miracle Mineral Solution exploits that emotion by offering false hope in the form of a potent industrial bleach. This article unpacks the science and exposes the dangers behind this misleading—and potentially harmful—“treatment.”

The past twenty years have seen gluten sensitivity transformed from a fringe concern into a mainstream cultural identity, powered more by consumer experience, psychology, and industry dynamics than by definitive biological mechanisms. This rapid rise has left many people unsure where scientific consensus ends and popular belief begins.

Scromiting” is a grim slang term for the severe nausea and vomiting that can come with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS), a complication linked to long-term heavy cannabis use. As ER clinicians report seeing more cases, the condition is forcing a fresh look at the gap between marijuana’s “harmless” reputation and its real-world risks.

Every year, as the holidays approach, headlines warn of “holiday blues” and Seasonal Affective Disorder—but that familiar narrative often leans more on anecdotes than on solid evidence. Depression doesn’t reliably rise with less winter sunlight or the holidays. While a seasonal slump is real for some, the idea that many Americans are destined for holiday misery isn’t well supported.